You awake expectantly. To your eager hands the body you occupy this morning is unfamiliar, though gratifyingly firm and sleek. You find a mirror. Narcissist and voyeur, you pose and gaze in awe. Exceptional you are, yes, but unsatisfied. You feel compelled to soak up just a few more carefully selected souls. Within hours you will shift, as you call it, again, for the life you are now living is merely another stepping stone. Each coming shift will bring with it new wisdom but erase recent memories. Gaps and lapses will challenge you. You will make mistakes. Yet you will succeed, as always. You have journeyed far from the icy roadside ditch where this all began, to your continuing astonishment, with a rape and a death, five hundred shifts ago. Time for celebration. Go out, have fun, do the town, but do not for one instant lose sight of the upcoming seduction representing your ultimate achievement. That body is far less beautiful than your current one, but physical perfection alone has become a bore. Now you want power. | Happy Anniversary Cosmic Sponge by Gregory Charles Erickson, Paperback | Indigo Chapters